Jaipur: After two Dalit boys in Rajasthan’s Nagaur were brutally assaulted and filmed, activists have alleged that the state police, after registering their FIR, encouraged the accused to file a counter-FIR under charges of theft against the victims.
The time of registration of the counter-FIRs circumstantially supports their claim. The Wire accessed copies of the FIRs: the family of the boys filed an FIR numbered #11 at the Panchaudi police station in Nagaur against the accused for assault and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act on February 19 at 3:10 pm. The accused subsequently filed FIR #12 against the victims for theft 44 minutes later, at 3:54 pm.
“The Dalit identity of the boys gave the mob a sort of licence to beat them mercilessly,” B.L. Bhati, president of the Ambedkar Welfare society in Nagaur, told The Wire. “If the mob had beaten up the boys for so-called theft, then why were they not the first to register an FIR? It was the police who encouraged the accused to file an FIR against the boys.”
He also claimed one of the accused, who owned a motorbikes agency, offered Rs 40,000 to the victim’s father in front of the police to not file an FIR.
The accused are named Bhiv Singh, Aidan Singh, Jassu Singh, Sawai Singh, Hanuman Singh, Ganpat Ram and Laxman Singh. According to the police, all seven have been arrested.
Local residents also accused the station house officer of favouring the accused as they belonged to his caste. “The police in-charge and the accused are of the same caste,” Prithvi Singh Meghwal, a resident who was present with the family at the police station, told The Wire. “That’s why he was pressurising the family to settle the matter without an FIR but [the family] stood firm.”
However, the station house officer of the Panchaudi police station, Rajpal Singh, said they had asked the victims to register an FIR, not the accused. “[The victims] were not willing to register an FIR against the matter. So after the video went viral, we asked them to register an FIR,” he told The Wire. “Soon after, the accused also came out to register an FIR against the victim. How could we stop anyone who wants to register an FIR?”
On February 16, the young men, named Vissa Ram (23) and Panna Ram (18), both residents of Sonnagar in Nagaur, had visited an automobile repair shop named Om Automobile Hero agency about 5 km from their home. There, they were attacked by the shop owner and other staff after some amount of money was found missing from a safe.
The assaulters grabbed the boys and inserted a screwdriver dipped in petrol into the young men’s private parts.
Frightened, the young men returned home and didn’t utter a word about the assault. The family only came to know of the incident after three days when the video of the violence went viral.
Bhura Ram, Vissa Ram’s brother, said, “His elder brother recognised him in the video and informed us. We then asked the boys what had happened that day. As we got to know about it, we went straight to the police to report it. [The police] kept us waiting until afternoon and then registered an FIR.” However, he refused to speak against the police.
“In matters of caste atrocities, the victims are often pressurised to keep their mouth shut,” Bhati said. “In this case, too, the victims are turning hostile because of the indulgence of politicians.”
The police registered an FIR against the accused under sections 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntary causing hurt), 341 (wrongful restraint), 342 (wrongful confinement) of the Indian Penal Code and sections 3(1)(r), 3(1)(s) and 3(2)(va) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act.
In their counter-FIR, the accused have claimed that the two Dalit men came to their shop at lunch time and, when nobody was looking, broke the safe and stole Rs 50,000.
Ten minutes after they left, the shop’s owner discovered the safe was broken and, after checking the CCTV footage, determined one of the duo had stolen money from the safe.
“We had recognised them in the CCTV footage so we went to search them in the village and found the two at the nearby circle. We nabbed them, brought them to the shop and beat them to make them confess,” the FIR filed by the accused reads.
